GunnLeif Merl II 2VIII/6 — kynni ‘family’
Sagðr vas lýðum ok landrekum
myrk* at ráða mǫrg rǫk fyrir.
Kærr vas hann kristnu kynni þjóðar;
vasat á moldu maðr vitrari.
Sagðr vas at ráða mǫrg myrk* rǫk fyrir lýðum ok landrekum. Hann vas kærr kristnu kynni þjóðar; vitrari maðr vasat á moldu.
He was said to interpret many obscure signs before the people and rulers. He was dear to the Christian family of people; there was not a wiser man on earth.
readings
[5, 6] kristnu kynni: kristin kyni Hb
notes
[5-6]: These lines emphasise that Merlin is beloved of Christians, probably a point it would have been important for Gunnlaugr to establish, when contemporary commentators were apt to fret about Merlin’s diabolic pedigree (Crick 2011, 77). The ms. reading kristin (refreshed) is emended to kristnu by Scheving, followed in Bret 1848-9, Skj B, Merl 2012 and this edn. In this edn the ms.’s ‘kyni’ is emended to kynni, dat. sg. of the n. noun kynni in the sense ‘family, stock, lineage’ (Fritzner: kynni 2); geminate <n> is not necessarily shown in Haukr’s orthography (Hb 1892-6, xiii). These minor adjustments produce two metrical A-lines. Skj B on the other hand, presumably to improve the metre of l. 5, transposes kristnu and kyni, followed by Merl 2012, but this leaves l. 6 metrically deficient. Kock (NN §91) instead proposes to read kristni, í kyni, interpreting ll. 5-6 as han var de kristne kär, var omtyckt ibland folket ‘he was dear to the Christians, was well-regarded amongst the people’. But the double construction, mixing uses of dat. case with and without prepositions, militates against this solution.